So looks like OpenJDK is effectively closed for business (bar OpenJDK6 backporting) for the foreseeable future. Is this any way to run a supposed FOSS project?

https://github.com/penberg/ Pekka Enberg

To be honest, I never quite understood why everyone moved over to OpenJDK when it was released. It was and still is Sun/Oracle centric project to produce a commercial product (with fancy roadmaps and all) and it’s very difficult to run it like a proper FOSS project.

TJ

Been working with Java since JDK 1.0
I do not care at all about OpenJDK – I’d rather have one single reference VM from Oracle.. and that’s it.

Noel Grandin

It looks like it was the open-source guys on the committee pushing for JDK8 to be postponed in order to pressure Oracle.

http://fuseyism.com gnu_andrew

Noel, there aren’t any FOSS people on the governance board. That’s half the problem.

TJ, the existence of other VMs, whether FOSS or proprietary, will be true whether OpenJDK exists or not.

http://rkennke.wordpress.com Roman Kennke

Maybe it’s time to start a community based fork (or rather… make IcedTea official), maybe then Oracle will eventually drop it like they did with OpenOffice and Hudson and give it to a foundation. It’s unlikely though, since Oracle has business interests in Java but neither OOo or Hudson. Either way, I don’t have high hopes that Oracle would do the right thing and would support a fork should something like this ever happen.

http://fuseyism.com Andrew John Hughes

Roman, IcedTea is a fork. It’s just a friendly one. I have a feeling Oracle are pretty much aware of this, and they’d actually prefer that we use OpenJDK as a base and release from IcedTea, in the same way they and other proprietary vendors have their own forks they actually release. The only pure OpenJDK builds I’m aware of are the OpenSCG ones.

I’d love OpenJDK to be this true FOSS project where everyone works together, but I don’t see it happening. The new governance board setup just seems to be further increasing Oracle’s control over the whole thing and making it harder for others to contribute.